The present invention relates to bulk volume filling of articles into storage boxes, such articles, for example, including unsized color-sorted citrus fruit such as lemons or other discrete produce such as apples, plums, pears, oranges and the like. With particular reference to lemons, it will be understood that lemons are harvested in a not fully ripe state, are transported to a packing house where they are washed and cleaned and then stored in storage boxes for a period of time during which they may ripen and before sending the lemons to market. Storage of lemons may usually be in wood boxes which are stacked one upon the other. Each box may include end walls and a center partition or wall for strengthening the box. When such a storage box is filled for storage, the lemons in the box cannot exceed the height of the box walls otherwise the upper lemons will be partially crushed and damaged during stacking of the boxes. In storage of lemons in such boxes, the lemons are not required to be counted or weighed. The main requirement is that the lemons be deposited in the storage box with a minimum of or no fall and with minimum or no damage due to bruising or partial crushing of any of the lemons. The volume filling of the storage box should also be as rapidly as possible because preferably the number of boxes volume filled per hour should be in the order of 500 to 800 boxes at one filling station.
A prevalent method at the present time of volume filling of storage boxes for lemons includes the transport of lemons along a conveyor belt at a fairly rapid speed, the diversion of the flow of lemons into a storage box at one side of the conveyor, the use of a worker at such storage box to assure that the level of lemons introduced into the box does not exceed the height of the walls, and the replacement of a filled storage box with an empty storage box with minimum interruption of the virtually continuous flow of lemons on the conveyor belt. At the fill station where the lemons are diverted into the storage box, the first lemons entering the box are subjected to a fall which is approximately the height of the storage box and the spacing of the top edge of the box from the delivery edge of the delivery board leading from the conveyor belt. As the lemons fill the box, the succeeding lemons have a fall which is progressively shortened until the box is full to the top edge of the wall of the box. To reduce the fall of the lemons into the box, the worker at the fill station may be provided with a flat board which is adapted to be inserted into the box with its bottom edge adjacent the box wall close to the delivery board. This board is gradually retracted and withdrawn from the storage box as the box fills with lemons. Manipulation of the board is manual and assists in distribution of the lemons in the box. The board must be removed when the box is full and inserted in the next empty box.
The desire to reduce the fall of articles into a box to minimize damage to the articles has been evidenced in the construction of count and weigh filling of boxes adapted to ship the articles or fruit to the marketplace. Rigid requirements to assure that a box is not shipped with an undercount or underweight have resulted in apparatuses which provide for filling of a box to its almost final count or weight and then adding in virtually a discrete manner additional articles until the minimum count or weight is reached. One such prior proposed apparatus is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 3,618,285 in which the articles are deposited in a box by an elevator which extends into the box and as the box is filled, the box is lowered until at its full count or weight, the box is on a conveyor which removes the box from the fill station and introduces an empty box to the fill station where it is raised for cooperation with the elevator. Such prior apparatus reduced the fall of the fruit into the box by moving the box relative to the elevator.